"And how did you get here from the Place Royale? The two points are far apart."
"Having said my prayers, both mental and oral, several times, in order to call to my aid the divine pity," replied Rodin emphatically and with an air of beat.i.tude, "I started out to find my way home, away down at the end of the Roule suburb, near the Folie-Beaujon."
"Poor child," interrupted Bathsheba. "More than a league to travel! How I pity the dear child. Go on with your story," she said to him.
"It is a long way, true enough," added Samuel, "but all he had to do was to follow the boulevards. How did you come to lose the road?"
"A worthy gentleman, of whom I inquired the way, told me I would reach home quicker by taking another street. I walked all evening, but all I did was to get lost. The wrath of the Lord pursued me!" After sighing and beating his breast again, little Rodin continued: "Then, at last, pa.s.sing your house, I felt so tired, so tired, that I fell on your door-step from weariness, and prayed the good G.o.d to come to my help. He deigned to hear the prayer of His little servant, and so you came to pity me, my good sir and lady. May G.o.d receive you in heaven!"
"You shall spend the night here, dear child, and to-morrow we will take you back to your G.o.d-father--so don"t weep any more."
"Alas, good sir, the holy man will be so anxious! He will think me lost!"
"It is impossible now to calm his anxiety. But are you hungry or thirsty? Will you have something to eat or drink?"
"No, good mistress; only I"m terribly sleepy, and wish I could lie down."
"I can well believe it," said Bathsheba, addressing her spouse; "after such fatigue and worry, the little fellow must be worn out. It is only natural that he should be dying to go to sleep."
"But where shall we put him? We are in a tight fix. We have but one bed."
"Oh, good sir," eagerly broke in little Rodin, "don"t put yourself out for me. I shall sleep very well right there, if you will let me;" and the boy indicated a re-enforced and bra.s.s-bound chest which his keen eye had spied, and which formed a seat at the further end of the room. "That will do me, very well."
"I never thought of the chest," remarked Samuel. "The boy is right. At his age one sleeps anywhere. With plenty of warm covering he will pa.s.s the night there almost as comfortably as in his own bed. It all comes out for the best."
"I"ll go fetch a cushion and a cloak, and fix him up as well as possible," added Bathsheba, leaving the room.
The boy sat down and huddled himself together as if unable to resist the la.s.situde and sleep which weighed upon him. His head sank upon his chest, and his eyes closed. But immediately peeping under his lids he saw on the table close beside him pens, ink, and several sheets of freshly written paper. It was Samuel"s unfinished letter to Levi.
"I surely was inspired in asking to sleep here," murmured the boy, aside; "let me recall without forgetting anything the orders of my good G.o.d-father," he thought, as the Jew"s wife returned with the makeshift bedding she had gone in search of.
"Here, dear boy," she said, "I"ll put you to bed and tuck you in well from the cold."
Simulating a heavy sleep, the urchin did not stir.
"Poor creature--asleep already," said Bathsheba. "I"ll have to carry him." Lifting little Rodin in her arms she placed him on the chest, while Samuel arranged the cushion under his head and covered him up with the cloak. These cares completed, Samuel and his wife turned again to the completion of the note to their cousin Levi; but his thoughts having been disarranged by the frequent interruptions, Samuel asked his wife to re-read the letter from the beginning, after which he finished it, while the young boy was seemingly sound asleep.
Bathsheba had just taken down the last of her husband"s dictation when suddenly another rap resounded at the gate.
"Samuel," cried the Jewess, pale and trembling, "that time the watcher gave the alarm signal."
Samuel went to the gate, opened the wicket and asked the lookout:
"What is up?"
"For nearly quarter of an hour I have remarked two men, closely wrapped in their cloaks, who came in from St. Gervais Street, and halted at the corner of the garden wall. They examined the house minutely. Immediately I fell on one of the stone benches in the dark pa.s.sageway and pretended to be asleep. Two or three times they pa.s.sed by without noticing me; they kept walking up and down, now examining the exterior of the building, now conversing in low tones. Finally they saw me, and said aloud--"There is a wine-bibber sleeping himself sober." They walked once more to some distance; then returning towards me, I heard them utter these words: "And now, let us report to the sergeant." They quickened their steps and vanished around the corner of St. Francois Street. Now you are warned, Master Samuel."
"When you first observed them, was anyone within?" asked Samuel. "Are you sure of that, lookout?"
"No one--except the child I brought to you, and whom you took in yourself."
"These two men must be attached to the police, since they intended to go straight to the sergeant; could their suspicions as to what went on here have been awakened by their observations to-night?"
"There was no one in the street while our brothers were arriving. I am sure of it; I kept good and sure guard."
"The suspicions of these fellows must, then, date from further back than this evening. But, in that case, at the first suspicion of one of his agents, the Lieutenant of Police would have had the house turned topsy-turvy by his searchers. There is something inexplicable in the conduct of these men. However, if they guessed that you were not really asleep, but could hear, I believe they would have enjoyed giving you a false scare. But then, to what purpose? No matter, forewarned is forearmed. Maintain your watch, and the instant you get sight or sound of the police sergeant, notify me with the usual signal."
Samuel thereupon ran to the green-house and gave the alarm, which, repeated by the Voyant on guard at the door of the temple, was the signal for the dispersal of the meeting. Then the Jew returned to the room where his wife awaited him.
"Well, my friend," asked Bathsheba hurriedly in an undertone, and unable to control her anxiety, "what is going on?"
"The danger is not imminent. Nevertheless, I have just warned our brothers to leave the temple by the two secret issues. The flag-stone which masks the descent under the hot-house will be replaced, for the police spies were watching the house. They will cause it to be searched, they must be able to discover nothing, and our friends must have time to escape. Rea.s.sure yourself, my dear wife; we run not the slightest danger."
"Lower, my friend, lower, lest you wake the child," cautioned Bathsheba, indicating little Rodin, who seemed to be still sound asleep, although his eyelids were imperceptibly winking. "Oh, may the alarms of this night be vain, and may all danger escape you!"
"Dear wife, let us trust to Providence. It inspired me to write that letter to our cousin Levi, and now, whatever may come, I am prepared.
The sacred mission bequeathed to us by my grandfather will be fulfilled, and I shall have saved the heritage of Monsieur Marius Rennepont."
"First--a movable flag conceals the descent under the green-house.
Second--this renegade of a Jew is going to safeguard the fortune of a certain Marius Rennepont," recited little Rodin to himself, not having lost a word of the conversation between Samuel and his wife. "Oh, now, I mustn"t forget that name, nor the two secret exits of the _temple_, nor the movable flag-stone of the green-house--nor a lot of other things!"
The alarm given by the lookout proved premature, for neither the sergeant of police nor his men appeared on the scene that night to ransack the house in St. Francois Street.
CHAPTER V.
COUNT AND JESUIT.
More than four months had elapsed since the night on which Victoria Lebrenn was received into the society of the Illuminati, and on which little Rodin, with froward slyness, had penetrated the secrets of the Jew Samuel, the guardian of the Rennepont fortune. In short, it was the night of July 13, 1789.
The Plouernel mansion, in the suburb of St. Germain, had been built, in the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, by the order of Raoul of Plouernel, peer and Marshal of France, and amba.s.sador to Spain. This seigneur, residing habitually at Versailles or at Paris, left to his stewards and bailiffs the administration of his domains in Auvergne, Beauvoisis, and Brittany. He never visited his country seat of Plouernel, devastated at the time of the Breton uprising.[5] Marshal Plouernel had had transported to his establishment in Paris all his family portraits, the oldest of which represented Neroweg, the leude of Clovis and count of the country of Auvergne. These portraits now adorned one of the halls of the Plouernel mansion; among them was one draped in black crepe, in token of mourning. The effigy hidden beneath the veil of black was that of Colonel Plouernel, traitor, according to the traditions of the monarchy, to his faith and to his King.
The first lackey of the Count of Plouernel, named Lorrain, the same who some months previously had carried the missive to Samuel the Jew, was showing into the Hall of the Portraits Abbot Morlet, of the Society of Jesus, a holy man of G.o.d and G.o.d-father to little Rodin, who, in fact, resembled him so closely as to be taken with reason for his son rather than his G.o.d-son. The Abbot was about forty years of age, clad in black, of middle height, weazened and nervous, with a fleshless, almost bald forehead over which fell a few straggling hairs of tawny yellow. His physiognomy, evil, insidious or beaming in turn, was above all remarkable for its caustic smile and its half-veiled glance, resembling that of a serpent. The Abbot was agitated, uneasy; he said to the lackey who introduced him:
"Announce me to your master without delay."
"Monsieur Abbot," respectfully answered Lorrain, "my lord will not keep you waiting an instant. His valets are just completing his toilet."
"His toilet!" exploded the Abbot. "To be thinking of such trifles--he must be out of his head!"
Then pausing a moment and recalling the air of preparation and the brilliant lighting of the parlors he had pa.s.sed through on the ground floor, he added:
"The Count seems to be expecting a large company?"
"My lord is giving a grand supper."